Uganda

Refugees at a settlement in southwestern Uganda have barricaded all roads into the camp to protest a food-aid disruption they say has caused the deaths of several children (..) But Needa Jehu Hoyah, a spokeswoman for (..) the UNHCR, told CNN (..) that no children have died in the Nakivale settlement (..) The UNHCR, along with the U.N.'s World Food Program and the Ugandan government, will deliver a food shipment to the settlement Wednesday, Hoyah said.

The United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes has called for more attention to the effects of climate change on the lives of ordinary people who are are increasingly finding it difficult to grow food and ensure their stable livelihood. (..) whereas droughts used to occur every 10 years, narrowing to every five over the past 20 years, there have now been four consecutive years of drought and/or poor rainfalls. In January, the UN WFP launched an emergency operation to feed more than 970,000 people in Karamoja, 90 per cent of the total.

Masindi farmers earned sh90m after selling 100 tonnes of maize grain to the World Food Programme under the Warehouse Receipt System. “They earned a premium price of sh795 per kilogramme as opposed to the farm gate prices, which at the time stood at sh525,” said Christian Baine, the CORONET managing director. (..) Baine said through the system, farmers were able to keep sufficient quantities, which were also of the right quality to attract big buyers like the World Food Programme.

The number of hungry people in Uganda has risen sharply in the last 15 years, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) announced in a statement ahead of World Food Day today. (..) World Food Programme in a separate statement said there was no cause for celebrations. “World Food Day is actually No Food Day for almost one out of every six people around the world this year,” said WFP boss Josette Sheeran.

Maize is one of the major cash and food crops in Uganda. (..) Toady, posho is the stable food for students in over 2,000 boarding schools across the country and a large percentage of maize is sold to the World Food Programme (WFP).

In the run up to the World Food Day tomorrow, October 16, Paul Busharizi, spoke to the the World Food Programme (WFP) country director, Stanlake Samkange, about Purchase for Progress, a new WFP initiative poised to make Ugandan small-holder farmers major players in the regional quality grain market.

Last week, the Uganda National Teachers' Union called on the Ugandan government to provide meals for the millions of schoolchildren who go to school hungry. (..) Primary schools are now receiving rations for pupils from the World Food Programme to counter the effects of the recent drought, but this won't last forever.

A new report from the Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWSNET) indicates that households in the Karamoja region will soon start to experience a considerable level of food security as a result of the ongoing heavy rains in the region. (..) The UN World Food Programme (WFP) earlier indicated that it required new resources to avert pipeline shortfalls of 41,288 metric tones of food worth about ($36 million) to support the people in the region up to December 2009.

At least 2 million Ugandans are threatened with severe hunger and malnutrition following droughts across east Africa, according to aid agency Oxfam.
It said the food shortages constituted the "worst humanitarian crisis Oxfam has seen in east Africa for over 10 years".
Paul Smith Lomas, Oxfam's east Africa director, said: "Many are selling their cattle to buy food. In northern Uganda farmers have lost half their crops and more than 2 million people across the country desperately need aid."

More than 1 million people in Uganda's Karamoja region now rely on food aid from the World Food Programme.

The WFP has raised concerns about the succession of poor rainy seasons in Uganda which have left more than two million people in need of urgent food assistance. In a statement today, the WFP reported that in the northeastern province of Karamoja, the situation is so severe that the agency had worked with the government to expand operations to reach more than 1.1 million people - over 90 percent of the population - with life-saving food rations.